Kashmiris’ Million March

And India’s intransigence

For over sixty seven years, Kashmiris have waited for India to fulfill its pledge to uphold the UN resolutions and grant them their right of self-determination. Unfortunately, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a Kashmiri, had no desire of upholding the pledge. He had conspired with Lord Mountbatten, India’s last Viceroy, and exploited the favours of his alleged paramour Lady Edwina Mountbatten to swing Kashmir into India’s lap. The conspiracy was confirmed by Christopher Beaumont, Radcliffe’s secretary. Beaumont revealed in a 1991 interview, published in The Telegraph, how Mountbatten had pressurised Sir Cyril Radcliffe, Chairman of the Boundary Commission, 24 hours before the partition of India and Pakistan to surreptitiously shift the boundary 20 miles westwards giving the Muslim-majority Gurdaspur district of Punjab to India, thereby providing India with a land-link to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The rest is history: how Indian forces illegally occupied Kashmir, Pakistani forces tried to liberate Kashmir while Nehru frantically called for a ceasefire. The UN passed formal resolutions for a plebiscite for the Kashmiris to decide their right of accession to either India or Pakistan but Nehru and subsequent Indian leaders reneged on the promise. Both countries went to war in 1965 and 1971 but the fate of the Kashmiris remained unchanged. Continuing to be oppressed by the tyrannical Indian forces, in 1989 the Muslims of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) took up arms in a just struggle for their rights, which India crushed with military might. More than 90,000 Kashmiris have been slaughtered, thousands of women raped and hundreds of Muslim youth languish in jails under draconian laws which give unbridled powers to the Indian occupying forces.

Since then the status quo remains, despite Pakistan’s attempted 1999 Kargil misadventure. The Composite Dialogue Process for peace commenced in 2004, which fizzled out after the Mumbai attacks of 2008. Since then India has been taking a hard stance, refusing to talk to Pakistan on the core issue of Kashmir.

The advent of hardliner RSS activist Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister brought to fore a sinister agenda for IOK. Modi’s 44+ plan was to grab at least 44 seats in the 2014 legislative assembly elections of IOK to gain a majority but failing that it became a part of a coalition government. Modi is attempting to get Article 370 of the Indian Constitution repealed so that IOK, which enjoys a special status under this legislation, could be amalgamated into India. To thwart international pressure on India to hold the long promised plebiscite by UN, Modi is changing IOK’s demography by resettling Hindu Pundits to turn Muslims into a minority. Simultaneously, Modi is constantly violating the ceasefire, firing incessantly across the LOC as well as choreographing false flag terror operations in IOK, blaming Pakistan for it. Modi has barred the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi and visiting Pakistani officials from meeting Kashmiri leaders, using this as an excuse to scuttle proposed peace talks between India and Pakistan. The role of the Kashmiris as a stakeholder in any talks regarding their future has been marginalised.

Under these strenuous circumstances, peaceniks like Mian Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani Prime Minister, formally taking up the cudgels for Kashmiris during his address to the 70th session of UNGA should not have come as a surprise. He had to face severe criticism from his countrymen and the Army for his omission of the “K” word at Ufa. It goes to Nawaz Sharif’s credit that he held a straight face when he asked the UN to consider it its failure for not being able to get its own resolution on Kashmir implemented and later insisting on including the issue of Kashmir in the joint declaration with US President Obama during his meeting last week.

The meeting between the Pakistani Prime Minister and the US President may have lasted 120 minutes but there are some negative indications too. Obama did not host an official lunch or dinner for Nawaz Sharif. There were deliberate leaks in the US media that the US was insisting on Pakistan capping its tactical nuclear weapons (reportedly at the behest of the Indian lobby since the said weapons checkmate India’s Pakistan-centric Cold Start Strategy). There were also demands by a section of US Congressmen to postpone the Pakistani Prime Minister’s US visit under the plea that Pakistan was not delivering on its promise for peace in Afghanistan. During his speech to a US think tank, the Pakistani Prime Minister was heckled by an alleged Balochi seeking human rights intervention in his strife torn province.

Under the circumstances, the planned “Million March” in New York on October 25, 2015, to mark the Day of Accession of Kashmir to India in 1947 took on a special meaning. A huge peace march took place in New York in which thousands of friends of Kashmir participated. The march was jointly sponsored by all groups who believe in the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir. There may not have been a million but thousands of spirited Kashmiris marched from the Indian Mission in New York to the UN.

Hundreds also participated in London, Brussels, Islamabad and Muzaffarabad with their own marches. In Srinagar, Kashmir, however, the leadership was put under house arrest in Srinagar so they could not go to the office of the UN and present the memorandum.

The Million March should not be a flash in the pan. Despite being faced by arduous circumstances, at home and abroad, if the government and people of Pakistan are sincere in supporting their brethren in IOK achieving their just rights as envisaged in the UN resolutions, Pakistan should make continuous efforts to expose Indian machinations and skullduggery and use its diplomatic and media resources to achieve this end. The handing over of the three dossiers of evidence of Indian involvement in mischief in Pakistan is not enough. The contents of these dossiers should be made public, the diplomats in Pakistan should be taken into confidence and Pakistani diplomatic missions abroad must brief their hosts of India’s continued intransigence over Kashmir.